Israelis bomb Sidon target

Press, 11 September 1986, Page 8

Israelis bomb Sidon target

NZPA-AFP Sidon Three Palestinians were killed and eight injured yesterday in an Israeli air raid on a refugee centre on the outskirts of Sidon, in southern Lebanon, according to reports from the scene. The Israeli aircraft made two raids, 10 minutes apart, shortly after 6 a.m. (local time), reports said. Palestinian anti-aircraft batteries returned fire but missed the planes. The bombs hit a fourstorey building occupied by Palestinian refugees in the town’s industrial tone, causing it to collapse. About 20 workshops and many cars were damaged by air-to-ground missiles. The explosions also shattered windows of buildings within a 200-metre radius. It was the eighth Israeli air raid on Lebanon this year and the fifth against Palestinian positions, killing a total of 19 people and injuring 70. In Jerusalem an Israeli military spokesman said the Air Force had flown a raid on a “terrorist base” south of Sidon, and that all planes had returned safely. Palestinians here had been in a state of alert against a possible Israeli riposte to the Karachi hijacking and the Istanbul synagogue massacre, in which Palestinian groups have been implicated. Nearly 75,000 Palestinian refugees live in Sidon, in the two camps at Ein el-Hilweh and MiehMieh, in the eastern outskirts, the inner districts and the southern suburbs. The port town came to house the biggest concen.tration of Palestinian civi--lians in Lebanon after the general exodus caused by the so-called “war of the camps” in Beirut in May and June, 1985, and June this year.